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I recently finished reading the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin. The books already released anyway. Having never read any fantasy novels before I was blown aware by the first book, A Game of Thrones, which is of course also the title of the popular TV series based on the collection. I never imagined how immersive a fantasy novel could be and found myself reading for hours on end, completing the series of books in a few weeks between work and around family time.

The problem with finishing a good book, or series of books for that matter, is what to do next. Obviously there are still books to come out of the Song of Ice and Fire series yet, but I don’t want to wait for Mr Martin to pull his thumb out and finish them. Eventually I decided to start watching the TV series in the hope of filling the empty void the remaining books have left. I soon realised this was a huge mistake!

Now before all the Game of Thrones fans out there grab their pitch forks and torches and come searching for me in the quest for blood, let me explain. While I’m sure the TV series is wonderful from beginning to end, the characters and settings are nothing like the ones in my imagination. This totally spoils the experience for me. In fact, it spoiled the experience so much I had to stop watching midway through the first season so as not to squash my hunger for the new books in the series.

On the other side of the coin, however, I recently read The Hobbit after watching the movie. I found that since I’d seen the movie first I already knew what the director’s interpretation of characters and locations looked like, meaning the characters and scenes in the book were already formed in my head from the moment I started reading.

Unfortunately this order of consumption also has its problems though. Since I no longer required my imagination to form the world depicted in the text, and the events that take place during he adventures or Mr Baggins and friends, the overall reading experience isn’t as immersive as I think it could have been had I formed my own interpretations of the characters’ attributes. Then again the movie doesn’t contain nearly as much detail or dialogue as the books, leaving at least some ragged strands of meat on the bone for my imagination to pick at.

I don’t see a way to solve this dilemma of mine and I’d be interested in hearing suggestions from others. At the minute I think I’ll need to either read the book(s) or watch the movie or TV programme for each series, and not both.